Conventionally, in an industrial field including nondestructive inspection, and a medical field including medical examination, an X-ray diagnostic apparatus has been widely used that irradiates a test target or an object with radiation (typically, X-rays), detects the distribution of intensities of radiation having passed through the test target or the object, and obtains an image of the test target or the object.
Furthermore, an image processing apparatus is disclosed that allows application programs running in background to be operated. This apparatus displays an image of a web browser on a display, which is an application program running in foreground, in a normal mode. In background, a music player, which is another application program, is running. When a user manually inputs a gesture, the gesture is taken by a video camera, a gesture command is recognized on the basis of the movement of the gesture, and the operation of the music player is controlled accordingly. The movement of a hand is displayed as a trajectory. The jacket photographs of pieces of music to be played by the music player are moved and displayed by gestures, such as a left flick and a right flick. Input of a hand holding gesture controls reproduction and stop of the piece of music.
During cardiac catheter manipulation, a manipulator, such as a medical doctor, cannot directly touch the X-ray diagnostic apparatus (input device etc.) with the hands in order to keep the hands clean. Consequently, for an operation, the manipulator indirectly operates the device by verbally instructing an operator, such as an assistant or a technician. It is, however, difficult to verbally convey intended operation details correctly. For some operations, the description is required to be made specifically in detail. Consequently, the operation intended by the manipulator cannot be easily achieved.
For example, when the assistant or the like is verbally instructed to stop a holding device (a device for holding a C-arm and the like) currently in operation, a time difference occurs between the timing of a stop instruction at a position intended by the manipulator and the timing of a stop operation actually performed by the assistant or the like according to the instruction. Consequently, time and efforts are required for an operation of matching the position intended by the manipulator with the actual position of the holding device.
Furthermore, there is a possibility that the time and effort required for the operation of the X-ray diagnostic apparatus cause the object to be exposed to unnecessary radiation exposure owing to inefficient treatment.
A motion sensor and the X-ray diagnostic apparatus may be combined to allow a screen operation for the X-ray diagnostic apparatus to be performed by a gesture. Unfortunately, there are problems in that the operation is only for the currently displayed screen, and the types of recognizable gestures are limited, thus allowing only a small number of executable operations.